Scare over meningitis baseless

With the fear of a meningitis epidemic failing to wane, a senior government official says “people are not thinking logically.”

According to Dr Abdul Latif Khal, an authority on infectious diseases, “it is a waste of time and of resources (with) people just unnecessarily spreading the panic further.”

Beginning in December, a total of 11 cases were detected positive for meningococcal meningitis, an infection of the coverings around the brain and spinal cord, out of which four patients died, including a 15-year old Qatari boy and an eight-month old Filipino baby.

The word-of-mouth spread quickly triggering long queues of residents wanting to get vaccinated at the Ministry of Public Health’s Preventive Health Department’s vaccination and immunization unit.

Until last week, over 4,000 residents were swamping the centre for vaccination while around 7,000 were showing up at the height of scare a fortnight ago.

“It is unjustified panic. Its just people worried about their children and their families. So far we have only one baby and we are a population of 1.7mn. And the other one was a boy. So there is no justification for rushing to get children vaccinated,” Dr al-Khal said.

According to the healthcare professional, in Qatar, more people die because of road accidents, lung infections, blood stream infections, but meningitis gets such publicity because death happens fairly quickly over one day.

“Meningitis typically stirs this kind of fear in communities around the world. It’s known that if meningitis happens in any country the reaction of the population is way higher than the actual spread of the disease,” he added.

Across the world, the only area where the meningitis bacteria are currently causing a real epidemic is in the Sub-Saharan Africa which is an area of several countries now referred to as the “meningitis belt.”

When asked if the ministry failed in handling the situation appropriately, the official maintained it did a fantastic job and that it was impossible for the Ministry to hide anything. “At the end of the day, people at the Ministry are people too. It is not in its benefit to hide the facts or the vaccine,” he said.

“They used TV, radio, newspapers; gave real numbers, did not hide statistics, got the message clearly across that there is no indication for mass vaccination but people don’t listen to logic in these situations and see what their friends and neighbours are saying,” Dr al-Khal noted.

According to him, the ministry was also vaccinating the people who are in close contact with the patients and so far there was no single case in close contacts of patients.

The vaccination continues to be available freely at the government centres because restricting its access to people would have forced them to buy them privately. It is only “strongly recommended” to those heading to Makkah, he said.